A Writing Exercise

****Congratulations to Shannon Iverson who won the Free Book Friday contest! We'll have a new free book offer this Friday, so come back and comment for your chance to take home a new book!**** 

Hello, writerlings!  Today is April 2nd which means Script Frenzy is in full swing.  For those of you who don't have a clue what script frenzy is, you can look back at my post about it or follow the link to the Script Frenzy website.  There you can sign up to join the masses as they fearlessly quest to write a complete script in one month.  (If you are a grown up writer who wants to join the fun, go here.)

Even if you never intend to write a script of any kind, I found this fabulous worksheet from week two of their "bootcamp" to be an excellent writing exercise.    It focuses on your main character's motivation for their journey and then helps you to define more of your villain as well.  We had lots of fun going through the worksheets here at home with our young writers and I thought you might enjoy it, too.  I found the following questions particularly helpful as I am currently editing my recent novel:


1. What does your main character want?
2. What does he or she need to do to make his or her dreams come true?
3. How does he or she change during the journey?

It's funny how I thought I knew the answers to those questions when I started out writing, but now that I am looking back on a finished draft, I see that the answers have changed a bit.  As a matter of fact, the answer to the first question was very hard to find.  My character starts out her story thinking she wants one thing, but discovers in the end she wants something very different.  Isn't that so often true?  Even in my own life I see this happening.  This is part of what contributes to a character's change, growth.

How well do you know your characters?  Are they living inside of you yet?  Can you understand them well enough to know why they do what they do?  If not, this simple exercise will help you to breathe a little life into those precious creatures before you send them off on their journey.  Come back and tell us how it helped you!

Gotta write,
Heather